FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the presence of the copies of control data for controlling a hardware device in prior art. The control data Sc, which generally consists of a plurality of micro-control instructions, is stored in a storage zone 110 of a BIOS 11, and a corresponding copy thereof is stored in a storage zone 120 independent from the storage zone 110. The operation of a hardware device 13, for example a chip of a peripheral device, is controlled by a drive device 12 according to the control data Sc stored in the storage zone 120. In a case that the drive device 12 is a driver program consisting of a plurality of assembly language instructions, the control data Sc can be directly incorporated into drive device 12.
When the version of BIOS 11 is upgraded, the control data Sc stored in the storage zone 120 should be manually refreshed along with the control data Sc stored in the storage zone 110. That is, the control data Sc stored in the storage zone 110 of the upgraded BIOS 11 should be duplicated to the storage zone 120 or the drive device 12 to refresh the control data Sc previously stored for the use of the hardware device 13. Otherwise, the operation of the hardware device 13 will be malfunctioned.
Since the duplication of the control data Sc provided for the hardware device 13 to be consistent to that stored in the upgraded BIOS 11 is performed manually, some disadvantages are rendered in practice. For example, it is laboring-inefficient to synchronize the copies of the control data. On the other hand, if the copies of the control data are not properly synchronized, the hardware device 13 may experience serious adverse effects or even cashed down.